


Come to Differences

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: (and a mild content warning for misunderstandings during rough sex), F/M, Misunderstandings, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sex, hookups in the face of constant danger, inadvertent attachments (?), prejudices, so there's some sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 20:01:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: “Hirani,” she told him. “Beautiful.”“You look like a flower,” he told her.“Don’t.”The guarded look sprang back into his eyes. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”But she shook her head—it wasn’t that. It was these sweet words, she couldn’t stand them. She should have known. Hera had tried to warn her, but had warned her of the wrong thing. She should have known she couldn’t slip from the barracks and into his bed every night without feeling something. And while they certainly were not in love, while they still understood each other only in fragments, while she was clearly his token Twi’lek and his contempt for her people remained, she did feel something.





	Come to Differences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tauntaun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tauntaun/gifts).



> This story fills in some of the blanks for [“Interim,”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10788342) which you should probably read first.
> 
> Thanks to [Coruscant Translator](http://starwars.myrpg.org/coruscant_translator.php) for the Twi'lek (Ryl). I worked it around a little, so the translation might be difficult. It's probably not necessary though.

The Twi’lek with the jagged rip in his earlobe said something Kallus didn’t understand, and the other one laughed. “Hey, Numa,” he called (“Ey, Nu-MAH!”). Numa merely rolled her eyes. The one with the ear (what was his name? Jafet? Japeth?) grinned in a way Kallus didn’t like and laced his boot.

The other one—the green one, the one who thought his Basic too rudimentary to speak often—bounced around her, teasing. Something in the movement reminded Kallus of his own younger brother. He looked again at the man—not a man, he could see that now. Only a teenager. “Numa and Kallus, sitting in a tree,” he would be taunting. Ryloth had few trees. What would he sing?

Jafet said something to Numa, who was holding herself above all of this with the air of a displeased monarch. The Twi’lek turned his attention towards Kallus instead. “Numa, she takes care of herself,” Jafet warned. “You watch your heart.”

“I’ll take note of that,” Kallus told him coldly.

Kallus and two of Phoenix cell’s lieutenants had a round scheduled in the arena with Numa and two of her compatriots. It was meant to teach both sides new techniques, perhaps shake them up a bit. He wasn’t looking forward to it. Numa was strong and smart and all of 54 kilograms, and she wouldn’t be happy with him after this.

“She tell you what she does on Ryloth?” Jafet asked. “She tell you she is a good rider? _Expert_ rider of beasts. She show you that yet?”

Numa snapped something in Twi’lek that clearly meant “shut up.”

Twi’lek men. He had the same coded image of Twi’lek women that the rest of the galaxy shared, but the men…the men had always been sycophants or loafers, vaguely dirty, a bit sly. Cowards, but cowards who were out to get him. Something in these men—the way they moved or the way they talked—resonated with that image. Kallus thought Numa intriguing, and though he feared he would find some piece of that old stereotype in her, as of yet he’d only grown more impressed. These men though—he didn’t like Numa spending so much time with them, and he didn’t like them.

 “We shape up for a tragedy here,” Jafet (Japeth?) teased a clearly irritated Numa. “You and your love, opposite sides.” In Basic. For Kallus’s benefit too, then.

She answered in Twi’lek, haughty, and walked into the arena ahead of them. The teenager grasped Kallus’s forearm as he went by, a gesture that meant “good game.” Numa was just ahead of him. Kallus hated himself for asking, but he did it anyway: “What did you say?”

She rolled her eyes. “Those boys are like family, and brothers are the worst. I told them we are not in love. We fuck.”

The buzzer sounded and they trotted to their separate sides.

 

…

 

He knew better than to take it easy on her, but he still had to be careful. The blasters posed no danger at all—they would merely vibrate the special sashes they wore and register a hit on the monitors—three hits and you were out. If they got into hand-to-hand though, he’d crush her. The Twi’lek men weren’t much bigger. So Kallus had to win and hold back, but that just made it a bit of a challenge.

Except that she was quick—quicker than him. All three of them were, and they played off of each other with such speed that they seemed to share thoughts. He cornered Numa against a wall, ready to tease her for getting caught, when she leapt over the thing like a cat. He couldn’t even manage to hit a lek before she was gone.

Shouts from just around the corner. Did that mean his teammates were winning or getting themselves blasted? Let her go for a few minutes. Go and hit the easy targets.

The next time he spotted her he did manage to corner her. She brought her blaster up a second after him, took a shot, tripped, and rolled awkwardly. Numa wasn’t awkward. She’d also just been shot, so she couldn’t return fire for thirty seconds. He could spare some charity. “Are you hurt?” he asked, offering his hand.

She brought her blaster up, useless but grinning, and then his vest shook with two nearly simultaneous shots. Jafet and the other one, from behind the walls.

He’d been set up. She was backstabbing him with these huttspawn.

Fine. If he needed to raise his game, he would raise his game. They would have to hit him another time to disqualify him, and he did not plan to let them take that shot.  

Kallus fired at the soldiers behind him, and when he turned around again, Numa was gone.

So she was faster than him. He had to pin her down, then, get a grip on her and make her stay still while he finished them off. A difficult game, applying enough force to subdue her without hurting her.

The next time he happened upon her, she wasn’t expecting it. She fired two shots, missed, and turned tail, darting behind a wall. He reached out and grabbed whatever he could—a lek—and she yelped in pain and whipped away. Then he was chasing her again, without much room to run. Be careful, he told himself. But also: Not too careful. Don’t let her get away. Show her that she can’t simply do whatever she wants.

He threw his full weight into getting up to speed, then reigned it in at the last moment, slowed down, and tackled her, shooting her twice on the way down.

Numa hit the ground flat on her back, one elbow cracking awkwardly against the pavement. He cursed under his breath in regret. “Are you all right?”  

She stared up at him with unreadable purple eyes in that fierce, small face. “You got me.”

Then he felt a blast shake him from behind.

Leaving the arena, all of them a bit worse for the wear, the young Twi’lek stopped him to give him a toothy, insouciant grin and a questionable translation. “Numa— She say you fuck. And she likes you.”

 

…

 

Not broken, only bruised through. Kallus watched her as she showered, her arm a lurid shade of purple.

He’d known what her body would look like as soon as he saw her. Small, dense muscle. Heavier than she looked. Nothing to spare that wasn’t made for battle. Not his type, but undeniably pretty. He preferred the tall, ice cold ones—women who would fight him for control and provide some psychological satisfaction beyond simply sating his body. Her ass and her breasts were a nice surprise under the armor, but otherwise—her shoulder, her wrist, even her foot—she was so small. Where was the challenge? And what game was she playing, if not a competition?

The shower shut off and Numa stepped out, toweling herself as she crossed the room towards him. His quarters weren’t large, but they were private. Numa, a temporary resident, had been assigned a bunk in the barracks with the rest of her cell.

“Ugh, it is hot as soup in here!” She dropped her towel on the floor.

Kallus wondered if he should inquire about her arm, apologize again. She claimed she wasn’t angry, but he knew a lie from a woman when he heard one. Still, she was here. That meant she would share his bed.

He touched her elbow lightly, and she shrugged her contempt for the injury— _garea_ , she had said earlier. Nothing.

So he pulled her against him and kissed her, palming a lek, scarcely able to believe that in this makeshift army, of all places, this had been freely given to him. And he trailed his hand from her ass over her hip, listening for the sharp intake of breath when he grazed the hollow there. Then between her thighs and she was wet, already wet.

“You feel ready,” he murmured behind her earcone, but she laughed and reached down to grip him.

“If you are intending to put _that_ inside me, you’d best get me more ready.”

Teasing him, complimenting him even. But in her matter-of-fact voice he heard the echo of her earlier words, and it soured the moment. “You are not ready, then, for the part where we simply fuck?”

Her exasperated sigh into his shoulder. She pulled away and looked him in the face, hand on hip. Kallus resented whatever germ of hurt made him goad her, and he resented her for her failing to apologize. Even if she’d only spoken the truth, it had been bad manners.

“Those boys are old friends. They were only teasing. Do not tell me you took it personally.”

“I did not take them personally.” He was no child from a backwater cell where petty squabbles meant more than a discipline problem.

 _Well?_ Her cocked eyebrow asked him.

 _I took you personally_ , he didn’t say. _Never before has someone been ashamed to know me._ Not many people here trusted him, and he understood why. Still, to be dismissed in such a way—him—and dismissed by her…

When he didn’t answer, she braced herself and admitted, “I am strange and out of place here, too.”

“We are not different in that respect, you mean.”

She stepped in, close enough that he could feel the heat from her body again. “Protecting our territory, I mean.”

That he understood. He kissed her on the lips once, almost chaste, Numa standing on the tips of her toes, and this was their reconciliation. Then he turned her around and pulled her back against him so that his hands could roam while his lips teased her throat. When he pressed down on her shoulder, she went to her knees without a moment’s hesitation.  

She was a strange combination. He still couldn’t tell whether she wanted to dominate or be dominated. She sucked his cock with no ulterior motive, but when he returned the favor she was positively bossy, directing him like an air traffic controller. When he flipped her over and held her down, her hips and face pressed painfully to the mattress, she seemed to enjoy it nearly as much as he did. But then he pushed into her too eagerly, and she cried, “Aah! Not so much,” perfectly assured that he would do whatever she ordered, even in that position.

He did, of course. He was no monster. But he wondered which of them was in control, and he didn’t know what role to play with her.

After their first time, she’d stretched, sat up, looked at him. “Do you mind if I shower before I go?”

“Of course,” he had agreed. She’d risen, sticky with their sweat, and he’d envisioned her body relaxed and sleepy under him. So he had acted on impulse for once. “You can stay the night. The bed is large enough,” he’d offered.  

She had considered. “All right.” Then she’d burrowed back into the covers, rubbing her nose against his shoulder in animal pleasure. “Your sheets are nicer than mine.”

 

…

 

An all-staff briefing would have meant tens of thousands in the same room. They broke the troops up amongst their commanding generals for a once-a-week report. Still, with hundreds in the same room this was less a meeting and more a download of information.  

Kallus invariably sat with Garazeb Orrelios. Numa, who had more friends on base—or at least less enemies—split her time. Today she had told her Twi’lek friends to shove off for a bit and sat by Kallus and Orrelios. She wasn’t used to schooling, though, and two minutes in she started sending him messages on her wrist communicator.

“This is dull,” the first one said.

“Less than informative,” he sent back. “How do you say ‘dull’ in Twi’lek? (Ryl?)”

“Go ery vuh’a.”

“Understood.”

She giggled at his formal response, and Orrelios rolled a long-suffering eye her way. “Only kidding,” she wrote. “Don’t ever say that.”

Kallus managed to shoot her an offended look without turning his head. Numa wasn’t even pretending to pay attention.

She tapped her foot for a few moments, then typed out impatiently, “Why are you here?”

She loved to start inappropriately personal conversations when she grew bored, he had found, but perhaps she meant it literally. Better to take the cautious answer. “The briefing is required,” he typed.

She would have none of his political responses, though. “No. I mean why are you HERE?” the next message said. “Why did you defect?”

She shifted in her seat while he thought long about his response. It shouldn’t have taken so long. He’d answered this question in military interrogations over the past several weeks, and he’d rehearsed this speech well. Still… “Are you certain you want to talk about this over comms?”

“Yes.”

Still, he suspected Numa would believe no answer he gave. _I could not in good conscience_ , his rehearsed speech began. That one he had given to the Rebellion leaders, along with more pragmatic reasons that had convinced them.  It was not untrue. He would not, would not exterminate these people, who had shown him hospitality. It was, of course, only part of his reasoning.

A blink of the comm. He had hesitated too long. Her new message said: “You are human, Core Worlds, smart, ambitious. Why throw it away to come to this death trap?”

 _I could not in good conscience_ …he thought.

“I think you will win,” he typed.

Her eyes flew open and she looked at him so pointedly that a few of the people around them took notice. Kallus kept his eyes forward, decorous.

“You think we will WIN?” she mouthed. He ignored her, so she wrote it down: “You think we will WIN?” He could practically hear her incredulous lilt in the words.

“I am a tactician,” he responded. _Valour and honor_ , his mind crafted the speech _. I could not abandon these things_. (And even if you lose, the tactician in his mind replied, these people will never kill you for the loss. Now that you’ve defected, at least only one side is trying to kill you.) Before she could respond, he added, “You do not think you will win?”

She drew herself up proud, haughty, offended, but didn’t answer. She didn’t think she would lose, exactly. She’d never surrender. Still, she knew her chances and she was no idealist. She’d chosen him, after all.

He spared her and asked, “Why are you here? Why die for this?”

Her answer came back immediately: “To die in battle is by far the best of my options.”

He reached over and stilled her hand before she could write more.

 

…

 

…

 

“We fuck,” she said. “And I like him.” In Ryl, it was perfect: Not _milirseis_ , the dewy love of partners who had pledged themselves. Not _darkan’talhora_ , an imported word, sex as a business transaction. Not _nie anan_ , the gentle dedication of a couple trying to make a baby. Just sex. But sex with someone who was skilled and intelligent and trying. And he played it a bit rough, was a bit much for her, which took off the edge that built up while waiting for a battle that never came. And they touched while she slept next to him most nights.

“We fuck. And I like him.” It would be difficult to give this up when she left, mostly because she would return to a war zone that flayed the body as often as not, where such regular pleasure was not to be had.

 

…

 

He moved in her, pushing delight through her in waves, cradled between her legs. Her hands stroked his hair. He turned his head to kiss her wrist, and that’s when she noticed.

“Kallus. Stop.”

“Hnh?” That animal look in his eye. Her words hadn’t registered.

“Wait.” She pushed at his chest and he stilled.

“What?”

“My strip is gone.” She showed him her arm where the inked tattoo gradually faded as the strip’s contraceptive properties wore off. “Do you have some?”

He dropped his head to her neck and took a deep breath. “In the top drawer.”

“Give me a moment.”

“It has to be now?” He flexed his hips against hers once, twice.

Numa groaned. Oh, it was good. But—“Yes. Now.”

“Fine. Fine.” He steeled himself and withdrew, and she rolled to the side to get up.

“Although—” he slipped a hand between her legs and squeezed, pulling her back down. “It could wait until afterwards.”

She removed the hand carefully. “No. Now.”

“All right. But,” he grabbed her again, worked his fingers into her folds, “Two minutes would make no difference.”

She pulled his had away pointedly, spoke firmly, disciplining a child. “No. I said no.”

If he tried again she would kick him this time. She probably couldn’t do much real physical harm to him in this position, but that should at least get his attention.

But he backed off. “All right. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Had his tone contained any of the petulant child, she would have gathered her clothes and left in a huff. Instead, he sounded apologetic and confused.

“I know,” she said, rummaging through the drawer and fishing out a strip. “But you don’t touch unless I say you can touch.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he repeated.

“All right.”

He meant well, when he thought things through, when he turned off the arrogant certainty that his worldview was the only one. But for someone so coldly formal so much of the time, he could use a few lessons in manners.

 

…

 

What made the experience surreal—for all of them—was that they had time. Few cells at Yavin ran skirmishes now, and while they knew—they all KNEW—that in the outside galaxy time was running out, Yavin held them in a bubble. It would pop. Nobody knew when.

So for all their training, the Alliance wanted its soldiers fresh, ready for emergency. They could train only so long before their minds were full and their bodies tired. And then they unwound, as much as the constant tension would allow. Everybody snuck off to private corners.

This morning’s task was half work, half holiday, a lesson in rappelling down the sheer cliffs to the jungle below the temples. “Come with us,” Numa suggested, and when Kallus replied that he already knew how to rappel, she told him, “So do I. Come with us.”

So they perched at the edge of the cliff, one group already halfway down, the next suiting up to follow them, and Kallus frowned at the rope in that look of concentration he so often wore. Everything so serious. He needed to relax or he would have a nervous breakdown.

Well. She could help with that. It would be fun. “Hey, Kallus,” she called, and he looked up sharply (“Eh, Kalloos”—she could hear the difference in her own voice, now). “Let’s race.” Then she pushed off the edge, mashed the belay, and swung into the air.

“Cheater!” he called from above as her feet hit the first time.

“Cheaters win!” she called back naughtily.

He rappelled by the book. That came as no surprise. He should have been able to catch up with her, use his weight to drop faster, use his legs to catch himself after larger jumps. Below him and gaining distance, Numa watched him descend precisely three meters with each drop.  She flung herself out and took as much distance as she could without increasing her recovery time. Ready on the belay. Bend the knees. Flex. Fly.

“Crazy!” he shouted down to her, but she wasn’t. She controlled her descent, and she knew how much her knees could take.

Still, she was tempted to slow down, not get too far ahead of him. The drop afforded a terrific view of his ass.

She took the bottom of the cliff with a few small hops, then let herself onto the ground and unclipped. Damp jungle soil beneath her feet. Kallus joined her a second after she’d sent the rope back up.

“I win,” she declared.

“You do this at home,” he accused.

“All the time.”

He crossed his arms, a grudging admission of her victory, and gave her that look—the one she hoped she was interpreting correctly. The one that meant he saw her as an equal rather than a commodity. Mostly it reassured her, but there was something in it that gave her pause. All right, equal, it said. But foreign. She felt her strangeness distinctly in this place, and his continual, measured analysis of her didn’t exactly help.

“What is our next assignment?” he asked.

“Find our way back to base. What a shame if we got lost.”

He stepped towards her, but she didn’t want the kiss, not now, and not with so many other people walking about. So she laughed at him and ran off, through the trees and the brush (so much green), and into the mouth of a nearby cave.

“Numa!” He was vaguely irritated, she judged. “One doesn’t run into strange caves. You don’t know what kinds of creatures live on this planet.” He was right—big trees meant big animals. Still, she had her blaster and so did he, and she wasn’t afraid of a few mynocks. Or anything, she amended in her head. No. She wouldn’t be afraid of anything. 

“Less talking, more walking,” she called back at him, and behind her, he trotted to catch up.

The first creatures she ran into were of the sentient variety, two Ithorians in flight gear just inside the mouth of the cave. They looked up for a moment when she almost walked into them in the darkness, then went back to twining themselves together. Kallus caught up, grousing. “We can’t fumble around in the dark.”

“You have a lamp on your belt,” she reminded him, although he knew it very well. And she had her own lamp. Enough light to see the floor and one side wall, but not enough to see the roof, far overhead.

“This is a poor idea,” he told her. She knew he would come with her, though.

“Much of what we do is a poor idea. Let’s explore.”

Deeper into the cave, and when they clearly were not about to stop and fool around, he too let himself get interested in their surroundings.

“Terrific stalactites.” Kallus pointed. “Tites,” his voice echoed, and the wings of something fluttered overhead. “Sounds big,” he cautioned, but Numa dismissed him, absorbed in mapping their path.

“Mynocks.”

“No. No power lines.” 

When the attack came, not from the air but from the cave wall, neither of them was ready. Kallus bent to touch a rock, it snapped shut on his hand, and he shouted. Two yellow eyes, pupils contracting in the glow of his lamp. He hadn’t worn his armor.

The creature had pulled his arm in up to the shoulder by the time she drew her blaster. The eye, she told herself. Eyes are always vulnerable. If only he’d lean his head…

One shot over his shoulder and the yellow eye became a smoking, stinking mess. He began to extricate himself before she’d taken out the other eye. Then he was free, wiping his arm on the ground in disgust.

“Bleeding?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No teeth.”

“Bruised, then.”

“I think our arms will be a matched set,” he admitted.

Oh. She hadn’t meant him to get hurt, hadn’t thought he COULD get hurt. If she could travel through the cave unscathed, so could he. “Do you want to go back?” she offered.

With his good arm, he indicated the path ahead of them. “There’s light. We should try that way; it will be shorter.”

“All right.”

They walked in silence, blasters out. The light grew.

“I told you we could handle any creatures,” she bragged.

He laughed that chuckle that rolled around like thunder, and it bounced off the walls of the cave and came back to her again and again.

The cave spit them out high—or maybe the cliffs simply dropped beneath them; they hadn’t climbed. Above their heads, the temple that housed the Rebel fleet and training rooms loomed in easy reach.

Kallus considered it. “We’ll be back first.”

He hadn’t looked down yet. “Come a moment,” she suggested. 

He stood just behind her shoulder, but he was too tall looming there, and she didn’t like it. She moved next to him instead, and he took her hand. Below them and on either side, the jungle spread out, a green canopy shrouded in tattered mist. They watched it, above the trees, above the clouds.

“Hirani,” she told him. “Beautiful.”

“You look like a flower,” he told her.

“Don’t.”

The guarded look sprang back into his eyes. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

But she shook her head—it wasn’t that. It was these sweet words, she couldn’t stand them. She should have known. Hera had tried to warn her, but had warned her of the wrong thing. She should have known she couldn’t slip from the barracks and into his bed every night without feeling something. And while they certainly were not in love, while they still understood each other only in fragments, while she was clearly his token Twi’lek and his contempt for her people remained, she did feel _something_.

One night she had come to him too sore for sex and slept next to him anyway. She should never have done that. These were creature comforts only. When she left in five days that would be the end of it—and she would have it no other way, they were not compatible for any long-term romance. But now leaving would hurt. She didn’t want it to hurt.

He took a step in, blocked her between himself and the rock wall of the cave, tall and unmoveable. “Do you want me to touch you?”

She said, “Yes.”

For them, it always came back to the body.

 

...

 

He bit her lip and she nipped back, but neither of them was really in that mood. She was leaving the next day and he was staying, and they didn’t know what would happen after that. It was sure to happen separately though. Kallus sighed and put his forehead to hers.

 “Stay out of the canyons,” he told her. “The new bombers can take out kilometers with one hit.”

“When they come,” Numa told him, “Get up high or go underground. Do not sit here and wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> Want an explanation for the obscure title? It's Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," though the song is a little too nice for this pair. Their one true song is probably "Buick City Complex" by the Old 97s. (It's not weird to make playlists for your characters. It's not weird!)


End file.
